Victorious, I suggested to Cassie, “What about this weekend?”
That got a frustrated groan. “I caaaan't. Ruth and Rachel have a 'thing.'” No more information was forthcoming. It had to be something villainous, so I let it drop.
I had something else suddenly on my mind, anyway. What I really ought to be scheduling was another date with Ray.
Okay, so, honesty time, that idea filled me with prickly awkwardness and excitement, but I knew I could do it. I'd done it once, and it had gone great, except for the part where our classmates busted in because they had to try out supervillainy. Or in Marcia's case, because it had been an agonizing seven minutes since she'd punched something.
The obvious problem was how to prevent a repeat of that interruption, which lingered on my mind, and a few days later, sprang forth into painfully awkward conversation.
At least Ray wasn't there. Just Claire, in one of the workshop rooms of my mossy magic-themed new lair, walking in circles around my brand new creation.
“And this does what, exactly?” she asked, arms folded behind her back. Every step she took was stiff, straight-legged. She was taking her time, unfolding her displeasure slowly, letting me steep in just how badly she thought I messed up.
And I stood there awkwardly, my hands clasped, my shoulders wriggling in discomfort, because she was right. “I think it's some kind of doomsday device.”
She bent way forward, voice light, smile fixed and unconvincing, to examine the device for buttons. “And does it destroy the city, the country, the world, the solar system? I do admire your super power, Penelope darling, but if we are ever dumb enough to switch this on, does the universe collapse into a black hole?”
“I'm not that stupid!” No, when my super power had proposed a universe-collapsing bomb, I'd not only rejected it, I'd gone out of my way to try and think through the process so my power would never, ever bring it up again. “It doesn't explode. It, uh… releases giant killer robots. I think.”
“Giant killer robots?”
“Yes.”
“It seems quite small to release giant killer robots.”
“They're self-replicating giant killer robots.”
“Because right now, we only have one quite small robot.”
“Yes.”
Abandoning the quite small robot, a barely identifiable humanoid shape amidst a mass of hooks and white plastic spines covered in microscopic tools, Claire stepped right up close in front of me. Crystal blue eyes, normally so playful but now sharp and invasively direct, stared into mine. Our glasses almost touched. “Which brings us, of course, to the real problem.”
Oh, criminy. My shoulders sagged. “Yes.”
Leaning back, she crossed her arms under her chest and pouted. “I liked that robot, Penny.”
“I know.”
“You piloting a robot was our ticket to reviving the Inscrutable Machine.”
“I'm sorry.”
Stepping away from me, Claire crossed to the opposite wall, which wasn't all that far away in these little workshops. Careless of what the moss was going to do to her silk blouse, she let out a deep sigh. “Okay, you've suffered enough. What happened?”
I sighed, too. I couldn't resent her putting me through the wringer. I'd earned it. Slouching against that thing which seals plastic together, I said, “I need a distraction to keep the other kids from following us the next time we go out. I thought I could generate some kind of fake, harmless disaster to make them think they're being heroes.”
Claire tilted her face down, head a little to one side, and peered over her glasses at me with frank, 'my best friend can't be this stupid' skepticism. “Penny, that's number two on the 'plans that never work' list, right behind 'Cause a disaster so we can get the credit for fixing it.'”
I threw up my hands. “I know! My super power took over before my thinking got that far, and it's been combining inventions lately, so I woke up to find out I'd combined my adventuring robot and the replicating web into a Von Neumann Rampage Device. Look, I'll have the Machine eat it. That ought to be safe.” Thank goodness the original Von Neumann had been good at math, not engineering.
“Are you kidding? What if we want an army of self-replicating giant killer robots?”
Amidst my panic at destroying an invention I knew my best friend loved, that had not occurred to me. How could I call myself a real mad scientist if I hadn't set off at least one robot rampage? Still, there was the whole 'plans that never work' list. “We'll set it off by accident. You know we will.”
“If we do, can we shut the rampage off with your universal control console?”
I blinked. Duh. Miss the obvious, Penny. “Oh, yeah, that would work.”
Not only was knife twisting time over, Claire let out an honest giggle, came over, and draped her arms around my shoulders. “Supervillainy is all about having the most toys. I thought you knew that by now! Speaking of which, where did you leave that cursed book?”
“From Chinatown? In a cell on the far side of the dungeon from the cursed statue, in the hands of the fake skeleton. I used the thumbscrews to clamp it shut, then welded the thumbscrews so they won't open.”
Claire nodded in satisfaction. “That should delay the inevitable horrible accident by months, at least.” She tapped a fingertip against my nose. “You are forgiven, Penelope Akk, but you really were very stupid. I know how to get your fan club out of the way when you want your next Ray time. All you have to do is reassure me of one thing. You didn't combine my sonic liquefier into anything, did you?”
Feeling both relieved and more transparent than Mirabelle, I said, “Oh, no. That's still in the front room under the battery charger.”
“Then your best friend will take care of it. I suppose it will have to be after your birthday – for which, by the way, you owe me a supervillainous adventure.”
irthdays are for family. On my fourteenth birthday, my parents took me out for pizza.
It was not the best pizza in the world. The best pizza comes from Pizza Place, which is only a few blocks away from our house. No, we went up to the far end of Glendale, to Gerty Goat's Family Farm.
Gerty Goat's pizza is not the best. It is not the worst, either, because it doesn't have enough personality to be bad. It exists. You can take nutrition from it. There are humorous topping options like carrot slices, but they all end up tasting the same.
Nor is Gerty Goat's Family Farm cool. It is hokey, a little run-down, condescending even to elementary schoolers.
I love Gerty Goat's Family Farm so much. If I went more than once a year, maybe I would hate it, but absence makes the heart grow wonderfully fond.
I love the goofy attempt at an arcade, where you play farm-themed whack-a-mole, and Gerty pumps her fist and yells, “Show those pesky gophers what for!” when the game starts, but when it ends it flashes a picture of Gerty cuddling moles with bandaids on their heads. I love the giant streams of tickets you end up collecting, and turning in a sheaf of them the size of a haystack to get a plastic Gerty Goat PEZ dispenser. I love the occasional piece of farm kitsch in an obviously modern restaurant, like the painted wooden planks and moon shaped cutouts on the bathroom doors. I love that the girl's bathroom has the moon shape wearing a skirt.
Most of all, I love Gerty Goat, standing up on stage in an apron next to her animatronic friends, performing song after song, because Gerty shares the secret:
She's a terrible singer.
And she knows. But she sings anyway, kicking the one leg that's allowed to move, waving a wobbly song in pre-recorded performances, declaring her love for the world. She argues with childish naiveté and utter sincerity against the cynical complaints of Mr. Piglington. Every once in a while her dog Woof slides out of the dog house molded into the walls of her fake kitchen, and says “Woof.” Sheepy Sheep spends every act on the far end of the stage looking embarrassed, but at the end slides over on a rail to give Gerty a hug.
So I sat, while Mom and Dad watched me with the amusement
of parents who've forgotten how to have real fun, and I ate my pizza, and I sang along with Gerty's 'I Don't Know What I'm Doing' song. I spent about half an hour at the Goat Noises machine, where for free you can push a button and Gerty's plastic head will make one of a thousand recorded real life goat noises, which range from adorable squeaks to guttural roars like a death metal singer choking on a pretzel.
But this year, it wasn't enough. At fourteen, with the heady wisdom and responsibilities of a grown woman, was I too old?
No. But I had super powers now, so when the final song ended, and the lights went out on stage until the next performance, I crawled up and took a closer look at Gerty.
If only she were a real AI, and had any idea I was there. She stood silently above me, a gawky giant with yellowing polyester fleece and a blue and white smock. My brain itched terribly. There just had to be a way to look at how she worked. My hands found the velcro flap in her back like I knew it was there.
Inside, Gerty was surprisingly human. Steel pole for a spine, bands like ribs to give her chest shape, wires running all over from a box where her heart should be. I had expected something simple, like, a skeleton, a couple of wires running down her arms, and a lot of empty space. Instead her shoulders were a mass of machinery, and her tail attached to a rotating cog, which sat on an extensible rubber spring, with its motor… well, and so on.
My super power understood all of this. I could feel that, see hints of blueprints identical to this if I closed my eyes. To me, this was proof of Gerty's magic. She was old, though. She could definitely use some maintenance. I used my Machine to clip a wire out of her central box, and reattach it in a spot a half inch farther down, sealing the connection with a blob of copper chewed out of the wire itself. Who needed a soldering iron?
Then I pulled a cursed penny out of my pocket and reached way up inside, sliding it into another spot where circuitry connected in her neck. Now a little piece of Gerty would always be me.
Woah. Hold up. Where did I get a cursed penny?
Was my super power setting me up, now? It definitely led me here, although this was barely a spark of inspiration, much less a flash. No, one of Mom's most emphatic lessons was to always be ready to accept coincidence. I moved change around enough, and liked being prepared enough, it wasn't totally weird for a magic penny to be left in my pants pocket. My super power just knew it was there, and knew I would like marking Gerty. I was fourteen, now. Who knew if I would ever see her again?
It would have been great if my super power had considered stealth, instead of making me crawl right up on stage, but Dad didn't seem mad when he climbed up to sit next to me, and the waiters ignored us. You probably got a lot of slack messing with machinery when you were Brainy Akk (and daughter).
He peered inside the flap with me. “This is much more sophisticated than I expected. If all the animatronics are built like this, they could dance ballet. Maybe I should offer GoatCo some more sophisticated humanoid motion software as a donation.”
“No! That would ruin it!” Criminy. Adults.
Dad reached past me, and twisted a gear-shaped thing, but it wasn't a gear, because it didn't connect to anything. It just had saw teeth for no reason I could see. His other arm looped around me as he poked with obvious interest at animatronic goat innards. After about thirty seconds of that, he asked, “What do you see?”
I couldn't turn my power loose. This was all electronics, while my parents thought my super power was mechanical. I had to talk about obvious stuff. “It's awfully decentralized. Couldn't you use a series of thin levers, each pushing the next one at a joint, so you could control the arms and fingers without putting motors everywhere?”
“You could. A lot of nineteenth century automatons worked that way, before Tesla made electric motors convenient. It's less efficient, and more complicated.”
Pulling my glasses down, I looked over them at him, endeavoring as much jaded disbelief as my newly rarified teenage status could muster. “More complicated than an electric motor?”
“The plastic in the motor's case is more complicated than the motor itself, but from our point of view it's just a flat solid. From a repairman's point of view, these motors are all interchangeable single pieces, generic. A lever-and-cog based system would involve chained interactions of dozens of fragile parts threaded together. The math is simpler than an electrical system, but in terms of ease of building and repair – much more complicated.”
He smiled down at me. I'd won some mysterious parental contest. Maybe I'd won just by giving him an excuse to poke around in an animatronic. It was a warm, perfectly birthday moment that Gerty Goat would have approved of, if she were real, and lasted right up until we had to be shooed off so the next performance could start.
he warmth of that birthday experience buoyed me enough to face the darkest of challenges. Girding my loins, which I did not actually do because it's a ridiculous way of tying up your skirt to keep it out of the way, I sat at my computer that evening, pondering where I wanted to ask Ray to go with me.
Booting up the chat room Claire set up for the three of us long ago (to everything there is a season, even Telnet) was automatic.
Of course, I was immediately greeted with…
Claire: Happy Birthday!
Ray: Did you have a good time?
Giddily, I typed in, 'It was great! I made a video of the goat noise machine. I know Ray has never been.'
Ray: Gerty Goat's Family Farm is your special place. We will find new places to share. Perhaps you would agree to go with me one week from tonight to the Santa Monica Pier?
World's biggest dumbbell disease immediately set in, and I typed 'To do what?'
Ray: Nothing. You are the only person I can be happy not doing anything with.
My heart melted into a puddle on the floor. I typed in 'Yes.' It was all I could manage.
Ray: I apologize for not asking in person, but when I asked Claire about chaperone availability, she warned me that we are having security leak issues.
Claire: We are. But I have a plan. All I need is Cassie to start a conversation with Penny.
That took exactly as long as lunchtime Monday. All I had to do was stop for thirty seconds before entering the cafeteria and fumble with my backpack.
Cassie appeared as if by magic, rummaging through her pockets. She stood close. A little too close, even. Yes, we didn't want to block the door, but she was close enough that I had that 'in my personal space' feeling.
She got in the first words. “Let me guess. You like the Beatles, right?”
I would have been less surprised if she'd tilted back her head and dispensed PEZ, like the trashy souvenir that my house keys were now attached to. Misinterpreting my dumbfounded silence, she gaped, shoulders slumping, face drawn in shock and disappointment. “What? I thought for sure. You're like Miss Class. Too outgoing to stick to baroque, too individualist to follow whatever's popular. You like History, big H. You had to be a… whatever they call a Beatles fan. I figured you'd know that, too.”
Fumbling to catch up, I said, “I've heard the occasional song when radios are playing, and on shows…”
Her depression lifted into desperate excitement. “Yes. Yes! That will work!” The rummaging through her pockets sped up, but there's just not a lot of searching you can do in the average pants pocket. She switched to her back pockets, which was an even worse bet.
Claire showed up, all smiles, but stretched, pointed, impatient smiles. “Penny, you know I love that you have a fan club, but we need to discuss when we're going to go get the Thing. You know, the Thing?”
My acting had to be better than Claire's, if only because she was trying for bad acting, and I just felt confused and guilty, for reasons I couldn't put a finger on. “Oh. Sorry, Cassie. I hope you find whatever it is.”
“Yeah. You too.” As Claire pulled me away, Cassie smacked her forehead with her palm, and muttered just audibly, “I didn't bring it.”
“I don't think she's-” I star
ted to tell Claire, but she put a finger to my lips.
“The walls have ears, darling.” Pulling me by the shoulder, Claire sat me down at our table, and she, Ray, and I all leaned over the front conspiratorially.
Quick and quiet, Claire said, “It's at the Pacific Park. You know, the fairground next to the Santa Monica Pier? I'll have a specific time for you later. Right now, I think you and Cassie got too much attention.”
Just as fast as it began, the huddle broke, and Claire opened up her lunch box. Lifting out a sandwich, she scowled. “Grilled cheese? Mom is still mad at me!”
Only Claire could be disappointed with the way her mom made Grilled Cheese sandwiches. Or if this was another part of the act, her loss. Me and Ray both held out our hands, making grasping motions. “Gimme gimme!” The gently fried, thick and sharp and dairy smell was already sending my stomach howling.
It wasn't until I was actually home that afternoon that I got a text from Claire, saying 'Diversion successfully planted. You and Ray will be arriving in Santa Monica at 8PM Saturday night. By then, your fans should be finished trying to find a mysterious artifact before we do. Assuming they haven't broken the pier, you should have lots of romantic alone time. Except for my diligent chaperoning, of course.'
Slipping back into my bedroom just in case I looked too excited, I typed out, 'Sounds good, but I need someone's phone number, and I know you have it.'
he advantage to Claire's plan was that by the time we arrived, not only did we know it had worked, but the fuss had died down.
It was already dark, but in the blocks and blocks of shops and parking garages surrounding the pier, 'dark' is a foreign concept. Lamps are everywhere, the buildings are brightly painted, and people walk around at all hours of the day and night, or at least all hours that thirt- fourteen year olds can get away with being awake.
Claire's mom dropped us off on the sidewalk. She did not lean out the door to talk to us, because that would be too momlike, and insufficiently sultry. She swiveled sideways in her driver's seat as we got out of the car, and flashed her gold colored ('gold plated' would not have surprised me) phone. “Give me a call when you're ready to go home, but take your time. I just got a call from Lucyfar. She's in the area and wants to tell me a story.”
Please Don't Tell My Parents I've Got Henchmen Page 26
